As you mentioned, in early 2013 the priest in charge of St Thomas More, Toronto mentioned in his blog that the number of members required for official "Quasi-parish/Mission" status was 24, something he clearly got from somewhere, but this number was subsequently hotly disputed on one of the blogs of record (I'm still looking). In any event, at the OCSP clergy conference in November, 2014 five groups were officially designated as parishes and nine as quasi-parishes, without any discussion of the criteria used. One parish has been added to the former list.The question of what happens if a parish doesn't cover its payroll has been at the back of my mind as well. Certainly in the Anglican canons I've seen, this is cause for a parish to be declared a mission, and notwithstanding the stated desire of the Ordinariate not to follow Anglican ecclesial structures, I've got to assume not meeting payroll is a serious matter that could get a parish in trouble with secular authorities.The inclusion of "families" in the recently published guidelines seems less appropriate to Ordinariate groups, often consisting of single older adults, than it would to a normal Catholic parish. Otherwise I think that, as you say, it is a step forward that something is now a matter of record.
One of the topics to be discussed in detail at the plenary OCSP clergy meeting in the fall is compensation and benefits. At the moment there are no formal guidelines, but if one of the requirements for becoming a parish is stability, then it must be able to guarantee that the clergy necessary to carry out its mission will be adequately compensated. If this ceased to be the case in a mainstream Catholic or Anglican diocese, the congregation would lose its parish status. I cannot imagine it would be otherwise in an Ordinariate.
The problem is that, by Fr Bergman's admission, St Thomas More Scranton has been missing payroll.
This leads to a bigger unanswered question that, so far, hasn't been covered in published policies: selection criteria for Ordinariate priests. Several candidates, as far as I'm aware, have been told that the OCSP doesn't ordain priests not associated with groups in formation -- but this is unpublished oral history that clearly isn't borne out by the numbers of OCSP priests who in fact are not, and have never been, associated with any group or parish.
In addition, while the Pastoral Provision delegate, Bp Vann, has clearly designated what denominations qualify as "Anglican" for a candidate to qualify, Houston has never done this, and it has ordained CEC priests who woud not be eligible for the Pastoral Provision, and beyond that, Glenn Baaten, a former Presbyterian pastor with a previous Evangelical background, is in line for ordination to the OCSP later this month. The word I've had from St Paul Park, MN appears to be that this sort of formation does not lead to happiness in the Ordinariate, but nobody seems to be questioning this.
What I can put together from partial accounts by several candidates for the OCSP priesthood is that the typical reaction to an application is that it simply goes into a "black hole". It then depends on what sort of powerful allies the candidate can marshal to extricate the application from the black hole, but of course, most applications will not emerge from the black hole.
Yet somehow less suitable -- at least on the face of it -- candidates like Fr Treco and Mr Baaten seem to emerge from the black hole irrespective of any deficiencies in their formation.
What action Houston may or may not be taking over missed payrolls in Scranton has not come to light, either.
